In the primary grades, there's time built into the students' day for "DEAR" time (Drop Everything And Read.) And once a month for an entire week, the Reading Train comes to school. Each student is required to carry a book wherever he goes (except to lunch, because the train doesn't come during lunch). You never know when you'll hear a train whistle and the announcement: "Climb aboard the Reading Train!" Everyone heads out to the hallway with their book, sits down on the floor, and you hear nothing but the rustle of turning pages for 15 minutes.
Little Brother's class has reading time as well, but it's not called "DEAR." Instead, his teacher calls it "DIRT" time: Daily Independent Reading Time. She has provided string bags for each student to keep a couple of books, to be read during DIRT time.
Can you tell where this is going?
They call these bags "DIRTbags."
3 comments:
My kids are in heaven when SSR (sustained silent reading) rolls around. They will love the DIRTbags story. Here, when I ask someone who is on the sofa reading to empty the dishwasher or set the table, what I get back is "you know, some parents encourage their children to read!"
I love the Reading Train idea! They do DEAR time at our school too.
The Reading Train was a Catholic Schools Week program. The kids LOVED it. Older kids too cool for books would run into the library at odd times and show the librarian what they were reading. They also lobbied the principal to keep it going. The principal was thrilled with the response so decided to do the train one week out of each month.
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